Expect to be thrilled and inspired by the 2008 President’s Concert at the KMEA Inservice Workshop!
On Thursday evening, February 28, the featured performing group will be the East Hill Singers, a men’s chorus of inmates from Lansing Correctional Facility and volunteer singers from the Kansas City area. The 8:00 PM concert is free and open to the public. It will be in the Century II Concert Hall in Wichita, Kansas.
In 1998, famed choral conductor and old friend Robert Shaw called Kansas native and beloved choral instructor Elvera Voth to ask, “Is it true that you are conducting a prison chorus?” In typical Robert fashion he cleared his throat and said, “Well, Mother Theresa, how may I help?” He traveled to Newton, KS to conduct a fundraising sing-along, and Arts in Prison, Inc, a not-for-profit corporation, was borne.
In 1995, Ms. Voth, newly returned from 30 years spearheading award-winning chorale programs in Alaska, organized the East Hill Singers. The first performance was in 1996. This chorus revealed undeveloped talents in the prison population and the need for arts programming to tap into these latent gifts as an empowering and creative tool for rehabilitation.
She inspired a visual arts instructor from the Kansas City, KS public schools to join in her mission and the program began to grow. Arts in Prison now has roughly 25 faculty who provide more than 500 hours of arts education annually in Lansing Correctional Facility, United States Prison at Leavenworth, Wyandotte County Juvenile Detention Facility, and Alternative Resource Center, a youth detention facility in Kansas City, MO.
Ms. Voth’s East Hill Singers remains the “face” of Arts in Prison and its impact has been immeasurable. Ms. Voth was able to pull from the inmate choristers the highest quality of performance, and the choristers are stunned by what the creative process taught them. Says Clifford Steadman, an inmate alum, “It taught me that my fear of not being good enough or accepted because of where I came from, prison and addiction, was not true. You cannot begin to imagine what this has done for my self-esteem, for hope in recovery and for faith in being part of society. That step of risk I took joining the East Hill Singers has paid off a thousand times.”
Ms. Voth is known nationwide as an outstanding choral conductor, and is in demand as a guest conductor and workshop presenter. An alumna of Bethel College, she has been honored with the Dr. Karl Menninger Award for her outstanding contribution to the field of corrections. She has won the coveted Governor’s Arts Award in two states: Kansas and Alaska. In Alaska, she founded the Anchorage Grand Opera. Ms. Voth and the East Hill Singers are the subjects of an award-winning documentary film produced by Sunflower Journeys of public television station, KTWU in Topeka.
“I am so humbled that Elvera Voth and the Arts In Prison organization have accepted my invitation to perform on the 2008 President’s Concert,” said Jean Ney, KMEA President. “I’ve attended many AIP concerts, and have never failed to come away uplifted and inspired.” Ney says that the first time someone attends an Arts in Prison event it may be out of curiosity. “But after that,” she says, “musicians go because quality music is performed, and they see lives changing before their eyes.”
Arts in Prison, Inc.’s mission is to facilitate personal growth through the arts for the incarcerated and their families. Arts in Prison, Inc. provides classes, training and other arts experiences such as music, theatre, art and writing that bring numerous benefits to the inmates. To date, hundreds and thousands of audience members have been touched by Arts in Prison programs. Arts in Prison’s successful “graduates”, now out of prison, credit the organization with making the difference that changed their lives. The organization is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization funded by private donations, corporations and grants. More information can be found online at www.artsinprison.org.